With the campaigns gaining strength before the Nov. 7 election, advocates on both sides of the proposed gay marriage amendment are distributing leaflets to voters or lining up key advisers.

The Commonwealth Coalition, which is working to defeat the measure, named about two dozen people from all over Virginia to its advisory council last week.

Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, an author and rural political strategist who lives in Roanoke County, is the adviser in Southwest Virginia. The longtime Democratic political consultant said he is an unpaid volunteer for the coalition.

"I'm pretty sure I ain't a queer. And I've never had queer thoughts, but I do have several queer buddies who called me and asked me to help," Saunders said. "I think it's blasphemy to put this on the ballot and try to divide God's children for political gain. God loves them queers every bit that he loves the Republicans."

Campaign manager Claire Guthrie Gastanaga said Saunders is one of several political and business advisers: "He is, in his own words, our 'resident Bubba.' "

Saunders, who volunteered for Mark Warner's gubernatorial campaign in 2001, said he will join in on conference calls and help the Commonwealth Coalition with its political strategy.

He said the proposed amendment is bait to draw Republican voters and "a bunch of Bible thumpers" to the polls in support of Sen. George Allen, who is running for re-election to a U.S. Senate seat and is entertaining the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid.

"It is another example of the Republicans trying to unite their base with a wedge of hate," Saunders said. "It is political trickery -- it has nothing to do with queers and marriage. It is to help Republicans, in general, unite their base in the name of hate."

But Chris Freund, a spokesman for va4marriage.org, which is working for the measure's passage, said that's preposterous.

"This amendment was introduced in the summer in 2004, more than two years before this November's election and before any of the other states had it on their ballot," Freund said. "The idea that it was done for some electoral purpose is absurd."

Freund said va4marriage.org doesn't have any advisory council, but does tap into a network of volunteers. They will be handing out leaflets at county fairs throughout the state, including the New River Valley Fair this week in Dublin, and are holding training workshops in Martinsville, Lynchburg and elsewhere.

"We have pro-family groups that meet and coordinate activities together," including the New River Family Forum, said Freund.

"Our plan all along was to really spend much of the summer putting together the grass-roots network and identify regional and county coordinators," Freund said. "It isn't the fancy, big media sorts of things, but it's the operational part that actually wins campaigns."